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Apple granted key multi-touch patent

Apple has received a patent from the US Patent Office regarding multi-touch contact. The patent, which covers apparatus and methods for tracking finger and palm contact “across a proximity-sensing, multi-touch surface,” was vital to the iPhone. It was initially filed on Nov. 14, 2006, before the iPhone’s release in 2007. Apple gained the patent upon acquiring gesture recognition company Fingerworks in 2005. [via Patently Apple]

Comments

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Is this yet another case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing? Apple has sued over other patents related to multi-touch and the courts have ruled them inapplicable in every case I can remember.

Basically, regardless of what *this* patent says, the courts have already decided that functionally touching more than one spot at a time on a touch sensitive device is not exactly as original an idea as Apple thinks.